RE: Instead, SRC member Wendell Pritchett, our neighbor, said that the Compact's focus is the district's relationship with the charter operators and that neighborhood district schools will come into play only when they are turned over to charters when they fail, not expanded when they succeed.
That sounds like the ultimate goal of all of this is to privatize the public school system. What does the closing of a "low performing" school accomplish? It's not the "school" that is low performing - it's the students who attend it, and those students have needs that are obviously not being met, where ever it is that they may be shuffled off to. And why is the discussion about "schools" instead of "students" in the first place? It seems like the children are just interchangeable commodities to be shuffled around and to spew back canned "education" geared to raising test scores so that CEOs can keep their contracts and bureaucrats can keep their jobs. Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 09:42:54 -0400 Subject: [UC] SRC Meeting: "Great Schools Compact" Community Discussion at 3/12 6 p.m. From: aroc...@gmail.com To: westphillycoalitionforneighborhoodscho...@googlegroups.com; ucneighb...@googlegroups.com; UnivCity@list.purple.com Those interested in public education in our city please attend the School Reform Commission meeting TONIGHT at 6 p.m. at 440 North Broad Street. These Monday meetings are set up "community discussion" style and your voices need to be heard. The topic of the discussion is the Great Schools Compact, which the district is undergoing to compete for additional money from Bill Gates. The announcement of the Compact came with a commitment to increase the number of seats in high-performing schools whether they be district, charter or parochial schools. HOWEVER, the committee to oversee the development of the compact has not a single parent, teacher or district principal on it (they have added an advisory parent role but the person does not have voting powers). It does have CEOs of charter schools, district administration with charter school backgrounds or who work with charters, an SRC member and a representative of the mayor. I attended a Young Involved Philadelphians event earlier this year, there were several Penn Alexander parents in attendance as well representatives from other neighborhood schools, and raised the issue to SRC members Wendell Pritchett and Feather Houstoun of the lack of representation from the district from neighborhood schools and also the groundswell of support many district neighborhood schools are receiving from their communities and how the district should capitalize on that rather than ignore it. Instead, SRC member Wendell Pritchett, our neighbor, said that the Compact's focus is the district's relationship with the charter operators and that neighborhood district schools will come into play only when they are turned over to charters when they fail, not expanded when they succeed. I felt this was a bit of a bait-and-switch given the Compact's initial announced purpose. And now, the SRC has released the topics to be discussed at tonight's meeting: “The Great Schools Compact set a goal of turning 50,000 low performing seats in District and Charter schools into high performing seats. There a number of potential strategies that may be employed to accomplish this goal, including 1) Creation of in District turn-arounds (Promise Academies); 2) Renaissance Charters; 3) Replication/expansion of high performing District schools and programs; 4) Improving existing District and Charter schools through principal and teacher development 5) Expansion of high performing Charter schools; 6) Granting new Charters; 7) Closure of low performing District and/or Charter schools. No one of these strategies can accomplish the goal. Some are more costly than others. How do you think we should prioritize among them? What conditions determine which strategy should be applied to a given school? Are there other approaches that should be employed? What are your recommendations?” I don't quite know what to make of it but given that there are district schools and charters under investigation for cheating on PSSAs (http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-11/news/31145463_1_city-charter-schools-vanguard-schools-education-secretary-ronald-tomalis), it kind of calls into question how we have determined what a failing school is, doesn't it? Some of these schools also have suspiciously high School Performance Index scores (based partly on PSSAs and other manipulable factors), which may have prevented the schools from being "Renaissanced." Note that Stanton and Sheppard, two schools that have years of good test scores and are listed for closure through the Facilities Master Plan, are NOT under investigation. What does it mean when the PSD wants to close down seemingly TRULY high-performing schools? Anyway, this is my rather long-winded summary of why people should come out tonight. Hope to see you there! Amara -- I foster with City Kitties: Rocco and Red
